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Posts Tagged ‘Internet and New Media’

One of the biggest names when it come to online polls, quizzes, surveys and public feedback, BooRoo.com has now announced the launch of an all new vertical of its services, that has been designed to enhance the experience of BooRoo users who have been accustomed to the company’s decade old platform. This all new initiative will now enable BooRoo to expand its reach beyond the United Kingdom and across the globe, with the help of numerous new features and functionality.

BooRoo has completely revamped the survey and quiz section with the introduction of an entirely new user interface. Furthermore, the toolbar for the section has now been embedded with drag and drop feature as well as a visual toolset, that would enable its clients to create and edit surveys, polls and surveys. This all new section will also feature new and updates themes and skins, that would make the customization of polls and quizzes that much more interesting and fun as well as more personalized, catering to the profile of the clients’ company or organization. With the help of these new features and toolkits, BooRoo has opened new and exciting venues for researchers, marketers, educators, HR professionals etc. to create more interesting, complex and interactive polls, quizzes and surveys.

According to BooRoo,

“Not only is this tool very easy to use, but it has served many purposes including surveys, polls, online registration, online forms, and online exams. It has definitely been a great communication and tracking too.”

Via PR Web

Since the launch of the immensely famous Apple iPhone series, the Apple Apps Store has been flooded with a plethora of applications ranging from business, entertainment, sports and covering a vast spectrum of other topics as well. Now, one of the foremost names in canine caretaking awareness, DogParkUSA.com has now launched an all new application for the Apple iPhone, that has been designed and developed to assist the canine owners in gathering all the required information, whether it be a dog park or a trip across the country with their pet dog.

This all new application called, Dog Park Finder Plus, provides the users with information about local dog parks in both maps and list pages and these crucial details include ratings, fenced and un-fenced markers, on-leash rules, hours and days of operation etc. DogParkUSA.com has also announced that, the 15% of all sales will be donated to Adopt-a-Pet.com, a non profit organization, that is known to be the largest in North America and focuses on adoption of homeless pets. This noble and enormous agency so far displays 155,000 pets for adoption at over 9,200 animal shelter throughout the North American continent and is actively supported as well as sponsored by Purina and Bayer Animal Health.

According to Greg Holsclaw (Creative Team, Dog Park Finder Plus),

“Through the use of innovative new tools, we hope to broadcast new dog parks and news about current parks to loving pet owners through our improved Dog Park Finder Plus, and we’re very excited to benefit homeless pets while we do so that every dog can be lucky enough to enjoy a day at the park.”

Via PR Web

One of the most biggest and perhaps the most privacy conscious social networking service on the Internet, Facebook, as per reports, developed a snag that enabled a spammer to post thousands of spam wall posts all across the Facebook walls. This anomaly occurred in the service’s photo upload system, that was later confirmed by Facebook and the company duly notified the users as well.

One of the Facebook users, Andrew Jones spotted the spam attack, when he was alerted to spam post on his wall, which he misinterpreted as a hacking attempt on his account. The victim immediately changed his password for Facebook. He later attributed the snag as a malware concern, as the user had logged on to Facebook via a public computer and was later informed of the glitch in Facebook’s own systems. The spam message tried to entice thousands of Facebook users with a free iPhone link, that would have taken the users to a third party website. There, the users were tricked into filling out survey forms as well sign up for product subscriptions, leading to a flood of unwanted calls on their cell phones. As per Facebook, the snag led to numerous spam postings on wall, against which the company too measures and removed the spam photos as well as informed the affected users.

According to Facebook,

“Earlier this week, we discovered a bug in the code that processes photos as they’re uploaded. This bug caused us not to make the correct checks when determining whether a photo should be posted to a person’s profile. We quickly worked to resolve the issue and fixed it shortly after discovering it. For a short period of time before it was fixed, a single spammer was able to post photos to people’s profiles that they hadn’t approved.”

Via Computer World

Well, it seems that the social networking attempt from Google in the form of Google Buzz, not only ended in botched service being closed down for good, but has also made the Internet search giant lose $8.5 million in a settlement in regards to a class action lawsuit filed against Google Buzz. The settlement took place in a federal court in San Jose, California and covers attorney fees as well as funding privacy advocacy groups.

The lawsuit was brought upon Google by a group of privacy right groups, who had been more than concerned in regards to the fact that, Google Buzz made the name of the users’ Gmail contacts a public knowledge, without the consent of the users. Even though Google took appropriate steps to address the issue, yet it turned out that, the search behemoth was a little late and was hit with class action lawsuits. This latest development is expected to finally close the Google Buzz saga, a service that Google Inc. had introduced, being envisioned as an alternative to the social networking giant, Facebook.

According to Google Inc.,

“We have always been committed to offering users transparency and choice in Buzz and all our products, and will continue to work together with users to provide the best user experience possible.”

Via Computer World

The world of social networking has come a long way from being just a venue for friends and family to connect and has now evolved into a business networking platform, that provides the users with the ability to reach to others in their respective niche of work. Now, another such service has surfaced on the Internet, that has been designed and developed specifically to help aspiring and struggling Indie music artists, gain a firm foothold.

We are talking about, Music Lunge, a social networking platform, that has the primary objective of helping out Indie and Major artists in the music industry in promoting themselves. Music Lunge provides some of the most astounding growth potential, as the service will enable musicians to get in touch with business consulting, development, music publishing, radio distribution and song mastering professionals and will be able to take benefit from live consultations as well. Furthermore, Music Lunge has collaborated with music industry big hitters, George “Pretty Boy Beats” Seals and super lawyer, Howard Hertz, to provide the users with the most updated and accurate information they require to jump start their career.

According to Sergio Giles (Founder, Music Lunge),

“We offer music live business consulting services to indie artists, independent record labels and musicians at affordable prices. Who better to get consulting from than the industry professionals themselves.”

Via Market Wire

The number of users of the microblogging service Twitter just keeps growing. Created in 2006, the site has 145 million accounts, less than five months after reaching the mark of 100 million entries. The information was released on Thursday (2) by the chief executive, Evan Williams, in a blog post on the official product.

He noted particularly the growth in access to the service through mobile devices. Since April, when the first conference company focused on developers, there was an increase of 62% of the total mobile users. For him, the trend is a result of the investment the company has made in recent months to be on all mobile platforms.

A company’s strategy was to seek a similar approach with Twitter for BlackBerry application developed by RIM, and Twitter for Android. This week, the company launched Twitter to iPad, which utilizes unique features such as screen size and fluidity of the interface of Apple‘s multitouch tablet. “Today, 16% of all new Twitter users get into mobile devices, compared to 5% before the launch of our first mobile application with the Twitter brand,” says the executive.

Williams pointed out that while applications for smartphones are important, there is still a fairly large number of people accessing Twitter on mobile phones through the mobile version of the site in the browser itself or by SMS.

Via: Twitter.

The social networking behemoth, Facebook Inc. will now become a platform for MySpace users to share their posts on. MySpace, one of the few social networking companies that are actively giving competition to Facebook, will now enable its vast user base to synchronize their posts with that of Facebook. This move comes at a time when, MySpace has been seen upgrading its user interface to the extent that, it has now begun to resemble that of Facebook.

With the advent of this new feature, Facebook users will now be able to view the posts and updates put up by the MySpace contacts right inside Facebook, thereby hinting at MySpace’s efforts to alter its business model from that of a competitor, to an ally. Furthermore, this all new service will allow MySpace users to share multimedia content as well including, music, videos, game applications, links and photos on both the websites. Though some time ago, MySpace was indeed one of the fastest growing social networks, but the explosion of Facebook’s popularity with its 500 million plus users, MySpace started feeling the crunch of being left behind, with a consistent fall in advertising revenues and a severe drop in new user accounts. The micro blogging sensation, Twitter, has already been paired with MySpace, so that the users can update both their MySpace and Twitter accounts from either of the websites.

Via Associated Press

Nine out of ten users across the globe are avid users of Gmail, the email service from the search behemoth, Google Inc., and as the service continues to evolve including the addition of Google Voice like features, so does the number of users on a daily basis. However, like with ever other email service in existence, even Gmail has been marred with the extreme clutter of inbox, that makes a user spend hours at a time cleaning his inbox and deleting the unwanted and useless emails.

However, Google has now taken the issue of inbox cluttering too seriously and has come out with an all new feature called, Priority Inbox, that has bee designed and developed specifically to help users priorities their mails and provide them with quick and easy access to these mails. This all new feature is being rolled to all Gmail users and will show up in their Gmail accounts in a few days. Priority Inbox has been released as part of an experimental project and will come with “beta” or “test” label. Once Priority Inbox has been activated, Gmail will begin showing mails in three sections, where in the top section will show the most important and unread messages. The second section will feature the messages marked with ‘Star’ by the users and the third section will be composed of all other mail. The users can easily toggle between the Priority Inbox and the regular Gmail inbox views as per their wish.

According to Matthew Glotzbach (Director, Product Management, Google Enterprise Unit),

“If you’re in meetings and you come back to your e-mail and you have five minutes between appointments and you have 50 e-mails, which five messages do you spend your time on in that window of time? We see this as an ongoing evolution of the focus of Gmail, which has always been around addressing this problem of information overload.”

Via PC World

Cisco has expressed interest in buying Skype before the company in its industry leading VoIP start trading shares on the exchange. An acquisition of Skype could either give Cisco a strategic advantage against their competitors or, perhaps, make Cisco a more attractive target for larger companies.

A report by the TechCrunch site claims, based on reliable sources, that Cisco has made an offer to buy Skype before its initial public offering (IPO).

Cisco is a virtual synonym for network hardware, but it also has expanded its business aggressively beyond the routers and switches. Earlier this year the company completed the acquisition of Tandberg to strengthen its position in videoconferencing, and is one of the leading competitors in the arena of unified communications.

Skype – one of the best known brands in VoIP communications – could provide technology and intellectual property of value to Cisco’s strategy. VoIP is the basis of unified communications, and Skype could provide useful tools for Cisco to compete with Microsoft and other rivals in unified communications and avert new rivals like Google – with its Gmail service Google Voice.

Via: TechCrunch.

Google announced last Friday that the Chrome browser will use the hardware acceleration to perform some tasks faster. Thus, the company follows in the footsteps of its rivals, Microsoft, Apple and Mozilla, which already use this resource in their browsers Internet Explorer 9, Safari 5.0 and Firefox 4, respectively, with the first and last are still on versions beta.

The browser uses the graphics processor for PCs to run some of its functions. Thus, tasks like video rendering complex 3D objects or will be executed by the GPU, adding speed to the browser.

The functionality of the hardware acceleration will be present in version 7.x of Chromium, the open-source project that provides the underlying technology for Chrome.

According to Google software engineer, Vangelis Kokkevis, hardware acceleration can optimize some graphics tasks, but the essential part of the educational work of text and 2D images will still be charged to the central processor (CPU). “Only the separate parts, also known as ‘layers’ will be processed by the GPU,” he said.

Chrome faces one more challenge in relation to its rivals in time to use hardware acceleration. That’s because one of its security features make it run separate processes, technology known as Sandbox. Once these processes have access to the operating system only in special circumstances, you need to create another process that allows access to the APIs necessary to exploit the hardware.

Via: Read Write Web.